FindMyLookAlike

Rating Look-Alikes

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 18:57:38 GMT

Last week we released a new version of our site with some fun new features. For example, you can now rate how well your look-alikes match your photo or rate how well other look-alike pairs match, and then you can see how other people are rating the look-alike pairs also! In addition, if you make the person in your photo “almost famous”, you can now also provide the URL to that person’s profile page if that person has one on www.myspace.com, www.wayn.com, profiles.aimpages.com, or memberdirectory.aol.com! This enables people who receive that person as a look-alike to visit that person’s page to learn more about his or her “twin”. So go ahead and try out these exciting additions and tell us what you think about them!

Tags: Ratings, Profile Page URL

New features!

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 03:05:17 GMT

Today we released a new version of our site with some exciting new features. You can now search for look-alikes among Chinese celebrities or Korean celebrities! You also can get up to 6 celebrity look-alikes and 6 “almost famous” look-alikes. In addition, if we cannot automatically detect a face in your image, you can tell us where the face is located, and we will then use that information to return look-alike results to you! Furthermore, if you upload a picture with multiple people in it, we provide you the ability to tell us for which person you would like to find look-alikes. We encourage you to try out these additions to our product!

Tags: Chinese celebrities, Korean Celebrities, Add a face, Multiple Faces

A new look and more celebrities

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 03:12:50 GMT

Today we released a redesigned web site – please let us know whether or not you like this look better. Also, you can know submit pictures using your webcam. In addition, a few days ago we added a number of additional celebrities (both minor and major) to our database. As such, we encourage you to see if you get new and better matches.

"Almost Famous" look-alikes

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 19:51:55 GMT

Do you have a “twin” somewhere in the world that you don’t even know about? Now you can find out! Last week we released a new version of our celebrity look-alike product that allows you to find an “Almost Famous” look-alike in addition to three celebrity look-alikes. The “Almost Famous” people come from images that have been submitted by users like you in the “Make ‘em Almost Famous” step. Also, try out our latest version of our companion product at www.hoowat.com, which allows you to find even more “Almost Famous” look-alikes! And now, you even have more options with mobile! If you email images you have taken with your camera phone to m@hoowat.com, you will receive an SMS that provides a link to three male “Almost Famous” look-alikes and one male celebrity look-alike. Similarly, when you email your picture to f@hoowat.com, you will receive an SMS that provides a link to three female “Almost Famous” look-alikes and one female celebrity look-alike. And if you email your picture to both@hoowat.com, you will receive an SMS that provides a link to three “Almost Famous” look-alikes and one celebrity look-alike of either gender. So go ahead and find both your “famous” and “almost famous” look-alikes!

Use Celebrity Look-Alike With Your Camera Phone!

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 02:26:38 GMT

We released a mobile version of our celebrity look-alike product today! Now you can use this fun application with your camera phone! To do so, take a photo with your camera phone and then email the photo to mc@hoowat.com to get male “Hollywood” celebrity look-alikes, fc@hoowat.com to get female “Hollywood” celebrity look-alikes, or c@hoowat.com to get “Hollywood” celebrity look-alikes of both genders. You will then receive an SMS with a link to four celebrity look-alike results. If you are interested in Bollywood celebrities, email mb@hoowat.com to get male “Bollywood” celebrity look-alikes, fb@hoowat.com to get female “Bollywood” celebrity look-alikes, or b@hoowat.com to get “Bollywood” celebrity look-alikes of both genders.

You will also have the opportunity to make the person in the photo “almost famous”! By clicking on the “Make Me Almost Famous” link and filling out information about the person (only first name and gender are required), you can add this person to our database. In a future release of hoowat, your photo then may appear as a match to other users’ photos!

This new mobile version is called “hoowat” and there is also a companion web site, www.hoowat.com Try it out, tell your family and friends about the product, and let us know what you think!

Tags: camera phone, mobile

Bollywood

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 14:42:18 GMT

Celebrity Look-Alike - Bollywood Edition is now live! You can now find which of about 130 Indian celebrities look like you. Simply click on the Bollywood option to select from that set of celebrities. And we plan to add more Bollywood celebrities soon. And of course, you can also continue to match against our previous 500 celebrities by simply clicking on the Hollywood option.

We plan to make a number of updates to the Celebrity Look-Alike during the next few weeks. Whenever we make an update to the Celebrity Look-Alike, we will add another entry in our blog. So we encourage you to click on "Alert Me as Entries are Posted" so that you can be informed whenever we post a new entry -- and so that you therefore can experience the latest fun features as soon as we add them!

William Hung

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 18:01:01 GMT

We wanted to address a recent comment made on Joe Loong’s blog about our product. He discussed how AOL’s CTO, Balan Nair, recently talked about the Celebrity Look-Alike product at AOL’s Developer Day and showed that both he and another executive, Barry Appelman, matched William Hung. Since neither of them remotely look like William Hung, Joe concluded that the algorithm must have a “William Hung bias”.

We would like to clarify that the “matches” that Balan showed for Barry and himself were actually “doctored” in order to get laughs. That is, Balan thought it would be funny for both of them to match to William Hung, and as such, the slides were modified to reflect this. In reality, the product does not produce William Hung matches for either of them. The real results are illustrated in the pictures below.

Joe also mentioned that he generated a William Hung match as well (see picture below). As we mention on our site, we currently have about 500 celebrities, about equally split among the genders. Because of previous legal issues with using celebrity photos, we were limited to using only this small number of images, and as such, unfortunately, we have very few celebrities who are not Caucasians or African-Americans in our database (we actually only have 2 Asian males in our database, including William Hung, and only 1 Indian Asian male). Fortunately, due to recent legal rulings, we will now be able to use thousands of celebrities (including many more for the different ethnicities). We plan to add at least another thousand celebrities to our site within the next week or two.

We are also continuing to look into improving our algorithm as well. As such, we encourage you to continue to check out the site to see to which new celebrities you match! And hopefully, even if you don't get the best matches, at least it will make you laugh!

Tags: William Hung

Send to a Friend Functionality

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 06:45:01 GMT

Today we added the ability for you to easily send your celebrity look-alike results to a friend. Just click on the "Email to Your Friends" link to show your friends how much you really do look like Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie or Catherine Zeta-Jones or....

Welcome to Celebrity Look-Alike!

Fri, 25 May 2007 22:26:45 GMT

Have you ever been stopped by a stranger on the street who asked you “Hey -- aren’t you that actor in the movie about …”? Have you ever wondered if you look like a particular celebrity? Well, now is your chance to find out! You can use our site to automatically determine which celebrities look most similar to the person in a photo that you submit. It does this by using advanced facial recognition technology that was developed by AOL Labs in collaboration with Oxford University and Caltech University. So go ahead and try it – and be famous! And please keep coming back to our site -- www.findmycelebritylookalike.com -- since we plan to add many more celebrities in the future (we currently have about 500 celebrities) and we are also working on improving our algorithm. Comments and feedback are welcome!

Tags: Facial Recognition, Celebrity